“Results confirm that social TV is here and the opportunity to use it to enhance and amplify brand experiences is only getting bigger,” Twitter and SMG wrote in a release. “Thus far, lab results demonstrate that Twitter’s ability to amplify significant cultural moments, far beyond original broadcast audiences.”

The Social TV Lab findings, compiled from various sources, including Nielsen’s Brand Effect for Twitter, Datalogix’s matched household modeling, Twitter’s in-tweet surveys, looked at results for campaigns from 15 U.S.-based SMG clients as well as general social TV engagement.

The results present a counterpoint to skeptics such as the NBCUniversal executive who earlier this year said social media doesn’t drive TV ratings.

Although the issue of TV ratings wasn’t addressed explicitly, the study found that people who use Twitter while watching TV are more engaged with shows and advertising, and therefore more valuable to marketers, than people who watch without Twitter.

Here are the main findings and an infographic by Twitter and SMG:

1. Twitter + TV = Increased Brand Awareness vs. TV Alone. For brands that used Twitter alongside their TV advertising, the study found on average a 6.9% increase in awareness for exposed audiences and significant increases for exposed and engaged audiences across awareness, intent and favorability measures.

2. Twitter Amplification = Sales Lift. For the brands that measured sales impact, we saw sales increases of 4% on average in households exposed to ads on Twitter and TV vs. just TV ads alone.

3. The Twitter / TV Multitasker is Here – and TV Ad Recall is High for them. Only one quarter of tweeting occurs during the ad break, and it was highest during reality shows (27%). This supports existing Twitter research that found viewers who are actively engaging in social media while viewing TV are genuinely paying attention to both screens as TV show tune away is less and ad recall was higher for TV Twitter multitaskers.

Our results found that television ad recall was also 13% higher among Twitter users versus non-multitaskers.

4. Real-Time TV Content Engagement is on Twitter. Tweeting about events/shows is higher (20%) than “general browsing” about a specific event/show (15%.) In addition, most tweeting happens when something in show/game/ad is worthy of a tweet (70%).

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